


Things You Need

by miranda_wave (miranda_askher)



Series: Love in Time [1]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Eventual AU, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Moments, Romantic Friendship, War wounds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-06-09
Updated: 2011-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miranda_askher/pseuds/miranda_wave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the journey that matters. Change it, and your destination's different too. The missing adventures of the Doctor and Rose Tyler, and the little things that make the stuff of this legend: the Bad Wolf, a magic number, a dance in time and space. After all, legends are never quite the same as the history books.</p><p>Canon-compliant through "Voyage of the Damned".</p><p>10/5/11: Three new chapters!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Against the Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Set between Series 1's "Father's Day" and "The Empty Child". Vague spoilers through 1.08.
> 
>  _Sixteen balloons against the blue  
>  They're red, they're red like a dream come true  
> Sure it was enough to give them to you  
> To us you let them go  
> Let them go..._

She’s sure she’s never had this much fun in her life, not goofing around back home with Shireen or saving a nutter from mannequin zombies under, unbelievably, the London Eye. Never like this.

Here she is, with said nutter, away from scary plastic surgery and gas ghosts and Daleks for a bit. They’re on a planet called Astra Mari, which he says was named for the beauty of its oceans, beauty that shines like a star. The star of the sea. She can’t disagree. The grass is blue and the sky is green, and the far-off ocean is teal and lively. She laughed at that those colors when they opened the doors of the TARDIS, but it’s still grass for miles and miles and a sky that goes on with only a hint of pink clouds and the day-ghosts of two crescent moons. And the people are sweet, if kind of lavender and fuzzy, and no one’s tried to arrest them or assassinate anyone. The only thing that could make this any better is a party, with lots and lots of chips.

And there is a party. He’s brought her to Astra’s spring festival, a celebration of new hopes for the year. There are even, incredibly, chips, and although he says they’re made of tree bark and snickers at the look on her face in his funny way, they are absolutely great chips.

She might, in fact, explode from eating so many of them while she wanders and smiles at the natives and kicks through the blue, blue grass. But then her Doctor is there, stealing her little basket-plate thing.

“Oi!” She slaps his arm, but he just shields the basket and grins at her. He is so incongruous here, in the blue grass and the breeze, with his leather jacket and his bizarre ears and that grin. But then so is she, yellow-haired in her pink hoodie. So incongruous they both fit.

He’s eating her chips now and she rolls her eyes and waits for whatever impressive thing he’s going to say. It’s building on his face, and really she wants to hear, but can’t risk expanding his astonishing ego any further.

“Astra Mari,” he says with his mouth full. “A perfect holiday. Well, nearly perfect—there was this one time, with the grasshopper people, and I very narrowly avoided starting a war. But that’s a long time from now. No reason to worry. Just good chips!”

She snorts and he looks down his nose at her.

“You’re always not quite starting a war, you know.”

He laughs shortly and mirthlessly at that, and looks away, and she knows she got it wrong, forgot the Dalek and the gun and everything he didn’t say there under Utah, and now he’ll want to go. But he doesn’t. He just turns back to her after a second and smiles.

“So, Astra. Great party, isn’t it? It gets better. This is like New Year’s, only instead of dropping a ball they let off balloons. Balloons! Each person gets eight, and they make eight wishes and trade balloons with someone, and they let each other’s balloons go up into the sky. They’re even biodegradable! Like blowing out birthday candles, for Astrans.”

“Are they allowed to tell each other their wishes, or is that secret?”

“Secret. Just like birthday candles.” He’s grinning again, and she’s glad.

“So are we going to make wishes and let off balloons?”

“Of course. I love balloons. Almost as good as bananas.”

Then they’re running back down the hill and hunting for the groups of children handing out hundreds and hundreds of red balloons with huge smiles on their faces and candy-stickiness on their hands. Eight apiece, and they find a quiet corner of the field.

“Everyone lets them off together, you see. It’ll be just a few minutes, so make your wishes, Rose Tyler!” No manic grin this time, just that quiet fond look that she likes even better, the one that says she’s the best not-stupid ape and he forgives her for the Reapers and Adam and all the dumb things she occasionally does.

She closes her eyes and wishes. Wishes that Mickey will be happier soon, and her mum will get why she left, eventually. Wishes that Earth will be safe from farting aliens and the TARDIS will never again break down in the middle of an ocean and strand them on the sea floor for a week. Wishes the next prison cell will have a loo with a door and that he’ll never stop laughing when they run, and they’ll never stop running, ever, and he’ll never leave her back on Earth and she’ll never leave him.

Wait, is that eight, or nine? She figures she can sneak an extra one in, especially if she doesn’t have to tell, and she’s kind of glad she doesn’t, because she’s not sure she could say some of these things to him. Not yet.

She sneaks a look over at him, and his eyes are closed, his funny expressive face quiet. She has no idea what he’s thinking, never really does, but she’s surprised that he seems to be taking this seriously. He hasn’t struck her as one for wishes, or luck, or anything but what he can drag out of a totally pear-shaped situation or find somewhere in the vast universe. But here he is, wishing something, and now he’s watching her staring, with that fond look and the barest hint of a smile.

“Sorry,” she mutters, and drops her eyes.

“What for?” He reaches for her balloons and hands his across, and they’re holding each other’s wishes, red against the green green sky. And she makes one more wish, that the ones she’s holding, whatever they are, will be true.

There are beautiful fuzzy people gathered all around them and a man with a bell standing on the hill, making some kind of speech she doesn’t really hear about wishes and hope and life. And then he rings the bell, sweet and not clanging, and thousands upon thousands of balloons go up into the sky.

She watches the sixteen that are theirs until they fade into a red cloud among the pink wisps. When they are finally indistinguishable from the sky, she turns and takes his hand, and they make their way home.


	2. Holding It Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Most things are bigger than they seem. We do get lost, but there are stars to guide us home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set directly after Chapter 1.
> 
>  _Don't know why you do the things you do do do  
>  Holding it together with some glue glue glue  
> Your favorite color isn't red, it's blue blue blue  
> No one knows, red red rose_

There is nothing more beautiful than a sunny spring day on Astra Mari, long before the grasshoppers, with red balloons in the sky. Unless, possibly, it’s watching Rose Tyler’s face glow after a day on Astra Mari.

Or possibly on any planet, including some with dungeons or literally living nightmares or infestations of slime mold. She always seems to glow, indomitable. Even if they have to run, nothing they run from ever seems to win.

The glow is so warm, so bright, and it makes him cold sometimes to know how young she is and how different they are. It’s freezing when he thinks of the things she doesn’t know about him, and that someday, something horrible will quench that glow and all the lights will go out.

But that’s not today. Today he watched her think of her family and laughter and joy, and maybe her adventures, while her eight secret wishes passed across her face. And then she took his wishes that she doesn’t even know, can’t know, and gave them to the sky. Just like that. He listened as she surprised him again, telling him that the blue of the grass was the most beautiful color she’d ever seen and why haven’t they invented it on Earth, when he thought she only ever saw pink. Today is one of those days when life shines around them and he lets himself feel the intoxication of it, just a little.

Now she’s pulling him into the TARDIS, still laughing, and the ship is laughing too, in his head, and he’s laughing, and telling her _yes of course I’ll show you the rest of the TARDIS, can’t have you getting lost again, now can we?_

She’s seen so little of the ship, busy as they’ve been, just the way to her room and the galley and the wardrobe, really. Well, and that room where he keeps the rappelling equipment they needed last week. It’s just like she’s seen so little of the universe and while he hides behind his jacket, he wants almost desperately to watch her drink it up. So through the TARDIS they go.

“What I don’t understand, Doctor, is how I’m ever going to find my way back to anywhere. This is a maze. A crazy, coral-y maze. You’re going to have to come with me every time I need _anything_.”

“Nah,” he says, though he’s finding, more and more, that he doesn’t mind being a constant tour guide. Lord of Time, ha. “Once you know something exists in here, and you know sort of where it is, she’ll just…take you there. You’ll find yourself going in the right direction. Really disconcerting, that, if you forget where you were headed.”

“The telepathic field again?” Her tongue’s between her teeth in that smile, and he nods. She lets her hand run along the undulating curves of the hallway. “Never did apologize for yelling about your telepathic field, girl. You go right ahead, getting in my brain.”

Nobody else has loved his ship like this in years. Hundreds of them, maybe. And the TARDIS buzzes with it, right back.

“So, where shall we start, then? The spare parts storage? The Tupperware cupboard?” There are gales of laughter held back in her eyes, like she’s sure he’s having her on. “Oi! Need plenty of Tupperware, don’t I? Experiments, centuries of leftovers, all that. Got a lot. That cupboard explodes sometimes.”

And she’s losing it, of course, which was the point, though there is in fact a Tupperware cupboard. “A whole cupboard of Tupperware. A room-sized cupboard. Of Tupperware. That explodes.” She gasps and grins. “ _Centuries_ of leftovers? _Centuries?_ And I thought it was bad you never do the washing up. I am never, ever looking in the fridge again.”

He’s holding back a grin too. “Nah, not the Tupperware cupboard, then. Did you know I have a garden in here? Xenobotany—it’s great. And there’s a library, and an infirmary, and a sauna, and, oh, a TV room! You’ll like that. Best surround sound in six galaxies and more channels than Satellite Five. And a darkroom, and lots of labs, and a real cloister I abducted from this great little planet full of monks, who had so many they wouldn’t miss it. And there’s a swimming pool…”

She shrieks and grabs his hand. “You have a swimming pool. I’ve been traveling in this box with you for I don’t even know how long, and you have a swimming pool, and you never told me. Where. Is. The swimming pool.”

So they begin with the pool, and spiral out from there, visiting all his labs and studios and both libraries and a Victorian drawing room (which he quite likes, forgot he had that), and a Centauri ballroom and astrometrics and a huge gallery of musical instruments. Finally they end up in the cloister, fingering the bell under the arches before he leads her out to perch on one of the window ledges and stare up at the sky. It’s not, strictly speaking, the sky—it would be too disorienting, and downright dangerous for human companions, to let the Vortex shine through—but the TARDIS is clever and the sky imitates the last place and time they went. There are always new constellations to find, and show.

As he points them out to her, he sees that she’s finally tired, though vibrating still with everything he’s shown her. Her hands come up to slip through the crook of his elbow, and her head drifts down to his shoulder. He stops talking, thinking to send her to bed, because people don’t put their heads on his shoulder and now she can find her own way to her room, but she tugs on his arm sleepily and mumbles, “No. Go on.”

So he does, even while he feels her breathing slowing and knows she’s got to be asleep, or nearly. She twitches, a little, and he tells her about the Red Dagger and the Shining Bowl and the Star of the Sea, all those constellations above Astra Mari. And just when he is sure she’s out, he hears her voice, quiet.

“Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired, like all the even-numbered chapters in this story, by The Weepies' song "Red Red Rose", quoted above.
> 
> Beta by Annissa, who is wonderful!


	3. Static

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Bad Wolf leaves a scar, the kind Rose can't see until the light catches it just so, months later. A girl, a god, and an abomination meet for the second time: who's the woman who comes after? Set between "New Earth" and "Tooth and Claw"...so that's about six months after Chapter 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Empty your hands  
>  Overheard conversations  
> Empty your hands  
> Static from the big bang  
> Dinosaurs, radio stations  
> Empty your hands  
> Genocides and foreign nations  
> Empty your hands  
> Let them go…_

He only seems to meddle accidentally, this Doctor, but oh, he’s got such a talent for sticking his foot in it. Yet another alien planet—this one with so many swamps she’s calling it the Dead Marshes in her head, damn Mickey for dragging her to those movies—and yet another jail. It could be worse: this cell’s not in a tidepool with the tide coming _in_ , and she’s got control of her own body, for once. She’s just stuck, in a jail, in a giant, giant swamp full of eels.

He’s pacing, pacing, pacing, and it’s very distracting since the cell is eight feet wide and it only takes him two strides to cross it. He’s tried resonating concrete and picking the sonic-proof lock (apparently these jailors knew what they were getting into) and scrubbing his hands through his newly wild hair and scowling. She’s pretty sure he’s got nothing, which would be funny if they weren’t in _jail_.

She sighs, a little more dramatically than necessary, and he pauses to give her a glance. She has _got_ to distract him. He’s going to drive her mad with those two paces, over and over again. So she grabs the first thought that comes into her head, something that’s been niggling at the back of her mind.

“So, Doctor. You never told me. What really happened to all those Daleks? And why did I go from pulling open the console on Earth to passed out on the floor at your feet? Your old feet, I mean.”

He turns and gapes. Whatever he was expecting, it definitely, definitely wasn’t this. But there’s no more pacing.

“My old feet. So are you insulting my old feet, or my new ones? Do the Chucks smell?” He’s smiling the slightly stiff smile that means, she’s learned very quickly, that he’s going to try to distract her if it’s the last thing he does.

“Doctor. Come off it. Tell you the truth, I liked—like—both your feet. All your feet. Whatever. God, I just said that. You’d better not bring it up later.” He will. “But I am not, we are not, talking about your feet, or your shoes, or how you could have come back with two heads, or any of it. You told me you sang a song and the Daleks went away. You were dying, so I couldn’t ask, but really, how dumb do I look? I’d met Daleks before that, and the one thing they never do is go away.”

He sighs heavily, his hands in his pockets, and stares at the dirty linoleum between his trainers. “No. No, they never go away.”

It’s a new look crossing his face: defeated, sad, and more than a little bit angry, and he’s given up the distraction far too fast. It’s like he knew she would get to this eventually and he never, never wanted her to, but there’s something he’s not telling her and for once he’s not going to hold it back.

It crosses her mind that she’s probably going to be really sorry she asked.

“What happened to the Daleks, she wants to know? Hmm. What do you remember?”

She thinks, hard. “Only what I told you. I was in the TARDIS, on Earth, and there was a bright light and singing, and then I was on the floor, and you were there, and I don’t think we were on Earth anymore.”

He sighs heavily. “No, definitely not on Earth, Dorothy.”

She bites a nail and tries to remember. There’s something she’s missing here. Oh.

“There was something else. It sounded like a wolf, howling. And--”

 _Howling in her mind and she can hear it again, now, almost like it’s in the cell with them. There was light, so much light, and she was the TARDIS and the TARDIS was her and they moved together, but it was nothing for them. The Vortex held them and they were the Vortex, and contained it, could do anything in it. With it. Move through it, bend it as they would, the very thing that bent space and time together and kept worlds apart. And the wolf howled and sang and moved itself through eternity and everywhere, like tracks in the snow and in stone, and she was everything, an abomination and a god. She brought life, and—_

 _Death. Not even death. Dust. Nonexistence, nothingness. They dissolved before her, as though they had never been, five hundred thousand Daleks out of time and space. She began a war and ended one, in an instant. And then she died too, let it burn her up like a moth in a candle, incandescent, not because she couldn’t bear the Vortex but because she couldn’t bear the emptiness, the nothing, feeling every single one of five hundred thousand living things vanish at her command. The sun and the moon went on shining, burnt her as she carried the darkness, complete. Only she didn’t die. She killed one more person that day, and forgot._

It’s all there in her head, like it always has been but she never knew, and she’s not even seeing the cell, she’s on the floor and gagging and trying not to retch. He’s there and the compassion in his face burns like before, under her skin. And she can’t speak, can’t, there aren’t any words, and the words that finally come out aren’t hers; she’s never heard them but she knows they’re someone else’s. Because she could never have words, not in any of the millions of languages the TARDIS can translate, for this.

“I’m death. I destroyed worlds.” She gasps, breath hitching. “Doctor, what am I?”

Suddenly the floor is gone and she struggles for it, and then she realizes he’s scooping her away, completely off the ground and sitting on the hard cot, and she’s fetal in his arms with her ear against his hearts. She’s shaking and crying so hard she can’t breathe, and she’ll never see again, it’s so dark with her eyes closed. And his arms are so tight it hurts and with the tiny, tiny corner of her mind that isn’t dying she realizes that he is shaking too and his face is in her hair and he’s whispering _Rose Rose Rose_ over and over. Trying to call her back to herself.

She can’t come back to herself. Not this self. Things are going dark, because she can’t breathe and the howl is one of emptiness and his voice is getting more desperate, and she’s sorry, but she’s already killed him once and she can’t, can’t go back there and that’s right. It’s the only right thing she has left. She’s fading as she feels him shift her awkwardly, as his hands go around her face, and suddenly she can breathe, and hear, and she knows there are tears on her face. She feels two hearts going double-time and fingers clenched on her temples and shaking.

She is in herself again, and she knows she is the Bad Wolf, and she knows what she’s done. It is utterly black.

“Rose. Rose. Open your eyes. You have to open your eyes, right now.”

It’s an instinct, obeying: that’s the voice she can’t refuse. Not the commanding voice, but the stricken one that has called her before, with another accent under Utah, and while the TARDIS crashed at Christmas. The one that will call her again. She’s heard it.

His face is white and scared and young, defenseless, not at all the nine hundred year old Time Lord she knows, but the small Gallifreyan _(a world she’s never seen, burning)_ child that the Wolf saw. And his eyes are black, so black, not the blown pupils of panic but the black that’s in her head. The black that felt five hundred thousand beings and someone she loved die, and knew that she caused it. That she is causing it now, will cause it over and over in the spirals of time. Would even choose to cause it again, if time were rewritten.

It’s a reflection of her, she knows, but there’s also something else there that’s him, something the Wolf won’t let her see.

He’s moving her gently to the cot, and she lies like a broken doll, watching him stand.

“Rose. _Rose._ Look at me, at me, not through me. That’s better. This is…bad, really bad. You can’t hold this, your mind’s breaking. You almost died. You meant to die.”

“I killed you.”

“Later. Not now. You have to let me help you.”

“That’s how.”

“Rose. We are not having this discussion. Yes, you nearly died. Yes, I died. You nearly died again just now and I am not having it, it’s not happening, so we can debate fault later. Now you have to let me help you.”

He’s tugging viciously at his hair, and his expression is the one that says _oh shit_ whenever they improbably don’t die but he believes this time they actually will. Only worse.

“I can take it out of your head and you’ll forget. You’ll just be Rose Tyler and the Wolf will be gone.”

“No.”

“Rose—”

“No. I did this. I carry it. I am the Wolf. I created myself.” A sour laugh coughs its way out of her. “I have to remember. You weren’t going to let me, weren’t even going to tell me. You meant to let me go on believing I’m somebody I’m not.”

“I couldn’t tell you. It was all there, and you had to remember for yourself. It would have come out like this, just the same, if I’d tried. I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am.”

“I think I probably do. I just found out I killed five hundred thousand living beings. Five hundred thousand and one. But you can’t go and _erase_ these memories. You can’t unmake the Wolf.”

“Okay.” He’s rubbing his face now, fingers across the bridge of his nose, like he’s going to say something he really doesn’t want to say. “Then give it to me.”

“What?”

“The memories. Let me take them and hold them for you, here—” he taps his skull “—and give them back to you a little at a time, so you can handle them gradually.”

It sounds like a good plan, the little rational bit of her brain thinks. Maybe she could get used to this, without the flood of it all at once. She’ll be different, but then she’s already different. Not Rose Tyler. Never again. He’s leaning over her, waiting for an answer. Something odd’s crossing his face. She makes herself dig deeper, and the air rushes out of her like she’s been kicked in the gut; she can’t breathe again, it’s so bleak. It’s not just the fear for her, although that’s there in every tensed muscle of his jaw. The hard thing in his eyes is that thing the Wolf won’t show her, him knowing exactly what he’ll be remembering, and that he has to.

“No.”

“What? Rose, you can’t just keep saying no. I know it’s black and heavy and it seems like there’s no way out, really I do, but you have got to let yourself find a way. _Please._ ”

She sits up so fast he nearly falls over trying to get his head out of the way.

“No. Not this, not now, not ever. It’s never going to happen.” Her voice has more force than she thought was left, and she sounds like the girl who told off Cassandra, both times, and the woman who would not let him shoot the last Dalek. She is not entirely gone, then, so she seizes that voice and asks, “What else?”

There’s an edge of relief around his features and he’s got, fortunately, one more idea.

“Well, I can fade it. It’s like…pushing it to the back of your mind. You’ll always remember it, but it won’t be like this. It won’t consume you. But you have to be willing to know it forever, because it’ll be in your long-term memory, and I won’t be able to get it out if you change your mind, not without destroying years and years of who you are. There will always be a scar.”

She knows immediately that this is the only option, the only possible balance between a howling pit and an act so nauseatingly dishonest that she can’t contemplate it. But she can’t help arguing.

“It seems like cheating. I committed…genocide. Once in reality and again just now in my head. I felt every one of them die, twice. It shouldn’t be this easy.” She closes her eyes because she really, really can’t look at him now.

He clears his throat, and his voice comes out funny, sort of thick. “I didn’t say it would be easy. And it’s not going away. It’ll just be…there will be moments when you don’t think about it. And then there will be more, and the moments when you do think about it will get further and further apart. It’s what would happen anyway, in time, only a little bit, well, accelerated.”

There’s nothing more to say. “Do it.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.” She’s not, but she’s sure of him, definitely more sure of him than anything else right now.

She feels him sit down on the cot beside her and his hands are on her face again.

“Open your eyes, Rose.” His voice is soft, his eyes steady. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

He closes his eyes and slips his fingers around her ears, and she’s numb now, so she keeps watching. It takes a minute for her to realize she’s not alone in her head, because he’s just a comforting familiar four-beat pulse, nudging her back into place and delicately gathering the darkness, the dust, and the burning bright light of the wolf (she hears it howl, still, but it doesn’t take her over a cliff this time). He’s making a place for them, where they can stay quiet, without eating into everything else. It’s in his face, though, everything she’s been remembering, and she knows the horror she sees there is her horror, not horror at her, and the light is the feeling of singing with the Wolf and time, not the fire that burnt him up. Finally there’s the essence of who she is, moving back into place, and he’s moving back into place too, the color returning to his skin. She’s feeling it all again, but from a distance. It’s like having a hand to hold: everything is a bit easier.

Then she’s alone in her mind and it’s quiet. She closes her eyes and breathes and listens for the memories. They’re there, the song and the dying voices and the guilt, and they hurt, they’ll always hurt, but she is breathing. And she is Rose Tyler, a little older and a lot wiser. There are tears on her face, but they’re tears of grief, true grief for what she did and saw and felt, not tears to drown herself in.

Something’s wiping them away by her left eye and she reaches up for the hand, her thumb in his palm and fingers wrapped around the back. He laughs, a little, not at all the funny-laugh, but the one that comes sometimes from sheer relief, usually when they should have died but didn’t. Only it’s got more of that ghost of terror and disbelief and gratefulness to be alive than it has in the past, and it goes on, shakily, longer than she expects. He draws their hands up and she feels the back of her thumb brush his chin, and just as suddenly he lets go and drops onto the cot next to her, facedown and silent. Still shaking. Hearts still racing, pounding through the frame of the narrow bed. He breathes evenly and deeply in a way that says he’s willing himself to breathe evenly and deeply. She listens, feels it, doesn’t dare look. Finally she rolls up on her side and lays one small hand in the middle of his back, the rise and fall of his shoulders and the bones of his spine under her fingers. She can feel every one.

Everything’s unpredictable right now, but even so, she is completely surprised when he’s suddenly beside her, face in her shoulder, arm around her so tight she can’t breathe, and one foot hooked over hers, anything to hold on. His eyes feel wet on her collarbone, she thinks, but she’s not sure. Her hand slips along his spine, back and forth, following the pace of his hearts as they slow, as he breathes evenly without forcing himself. This is so different, but everything’s different now, and she’d be shocked except she thinks it’ll be a while before anything can really shock her again. It takes a long time for his pulse to go back to normal while he clings to her.

Finally he draws back, sits up, and scrubs his face with both hands before running his fingers through his hair and pulling out his glasses. But she can see so clearly right now: she knows he’s just trying for detachment and not really getting there. So does he.

“I’m sorry. That’s not how that was supposed to end up.” He gives her a brave half-smile. “You were supposed to get a little peace of mind and a bit of a nap, and I was supposed to go work on this lock again. Are you…I mean, is it better?”

“I don’t know. I think you’ll have to ask me later. It’s just…so much right now. But it’s all right, this. You, you know—you were something that wasn’t the dark. In my head, yeah, but also after. Well. I’m saying this very badly,” and she feels that same half-smile on her own face, “but as bad as it is to worry about you haring off places and, y’know, feeling terrible things in my mind, it’s easier, it helps, to worry about you instead of me.”

“You do explain things so very badly, and yet they all make sense in the end.” And now the smile is real, his shoulders are relaxing, and the rest of the tension is fading from him as he stands and pulls out the sonic screwdriver. “You sleep now. You’re going to be alright.”

She doesn’t mean to sleep, but the exhaustion washes over her like a breaker. The sound of his sonic reminds her of the tide coming in, and it draws her down into a warm pool on a beach, with the sun flickering through the water. She sleeps until he wakes her gently to tell her they can leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like all odd-numbered chapters, inspired by The Weepies' "Empty Your Hands", as quoted above.
> 
> Beta by Annissa.


	4. Open It Back Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Bad Wolf may have been the lesser evil, but that doesn't make things right, and it certainly doesn't make them easy. Fortunately, a little swamp mud goes a long way. Follows immediately after Chapter 3, between "New Earth" and "Tooth and Claw". Humor and angst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _So you never get the things you need need need  
>  Where it's hurt you cover up with weeds weeds weeds  
> Open it back up and let it bleed bleed bleed  
> No one knows, red red rose_
> 
> I own only my own words.

Out of the cell, check. Foil a coup d’état, check. Save Rose Tyler, check. Run for your life…

Well, still working on that one. Although the coup d’état part he’s pretty proud of. And he’s not going to think right now about exactly how he saved Rose Tyler, so the running really isn’t so bad. Avoiding the eels is a good distraction.

They’ve been in the swamp for almost a day and a half. Rose is pale and drawn, but she keeps muttering about _Dead Marshes, all dead and rotten, bloody hell,_ and he takes that as a good sign. Trying to foil the coup was great, lots of sneaking and dramatic entrances and last-minute bluffing that made Rose almost laugh. Actually succeeding in foiling the coup was fantastic. But then there were those rebels that they just missed catching by an eensy bit, those rebels who decided that it would be a great thing to ambush them while they were headed back to the TARDIS. Next thing he knew they were spending the night up a scrubby tree, soaked with swamp and stinking, unable to move, unable to sleep without falling into the welcoming arms of an angry guerrilla, unable to talk (possibly a blessing). Just able to hold on and think (actually, that wasn’t much of a blessing).

He’s picking his way around the worst of the pools, trying to find the ground that’s ground and not a bog they’ll break through. Behind him, the grumbling tells him she’s still there. He’s beyond tired, might even actually sleep, and she’s hungry, but it’s not far to the TARDIS now, at least as long as there are no more rebels with big huge guns.

Oh wait. That does look like a suspicious bush over there, doesn’t it. A suspiciously moving bush with a suspiciously barrel-like black thing poking out of it.

“Rose,” he whispers. “Don’t say anything, don’t stop walking, but be ready to run. Left.”

The grumbling stops, and he hopes she’s got it, because he can’t take his eyes off that bush until they get up with this tree that will block the sightlines, just before they get in range.

Now here’s the tree, out of the sightline. Oops, into range. Great day, this.

“Run!”

So now they’re running to the left in a wild zigzag, splashing through puddles and probably exciting every eel on this Void-damned planet, which he’s never ever coming back to. At least this’ll throw off their aim, maybe. Oh, but it’s obviously not going to stop them from trying. And oh, now they’re being chased over an open swamp, and that is a very, very big gun, and this day could not possibly get worse.

He’s never supposed to say that, because days like this always surprise him.

He looks over his shoulder to make sure Rose is still there, and she is, sprinting and covered with muck to her waist, but past her he sees the most wonderful, glorious, unimaginably lucky thing. The first gun-toting madman stops to aim just as the second runs up behind him, and smash! One guerrilla goes into the other, and one gun goes nose-first into the ground, and two angry soldiers go flat down in the swamp water.

There is a great stirring of eels.

He pauses to thank all the planets and the stars in every age for that wish he made on Astra, the one about days that couldn’t be any worse occasionally _not_ getting worse, and Rose nearly crashes into him. That nearly sends both of them into the drink too, rendering all lucky planets and stars and balloon-wishes completely academic.

“Doctor?” she wheezes, and bends over, gasping for breath.

“Um…let’s not wait up.” He grabs her hand and starts running again, listening to her curse, and thinking it might be the best, most normal thing in the multiverse that he could hear right now. One more bend and the TARDIS is in sight.

Her hand’s out of his and she’s sprinting past him, completely single-minded and focused, no doubt, on the endless hot water heater, and suddenly he’s racing her and the gloom and the stink are gone and they’re going home—

And then he’s winning, because her foot’s gone straight through the bog and she’s literally up to her eyeballs in swamp, forty feet from the safe blue doors, shrieking.

“Eels! Oh my god, are there eels? There are eels, I’m going to die, oh god, I’m going to die in the fucking dead marshes and it’s going to be eels. I can’t get out! The water’s moving, I can feel them, they’re coming—”

And then he’s got her by the wrist and he’s _heaving_ back (she’s 37 percent heavier waterlogged, he notes distantly). His spine is not going to thank him later, but she’s on the ground, jerking her boot out of the way as the eels break the surface. And he goes down too, smack on his backside, and lets himself flop over in the muck. _Brilliant._

“Doctor?”

“Hmm?”

“Let’s never have this day again.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, look at me. I’m soaked. I stink. There is more swamp-weed in my hair than there is hair, and I don’t know if this is mud or eel-shit.” She sits up and runs a disgusted hand across her shirt. “Is this eel-shit?”

“Hmm. Maybe? No? Yeah.”

“Oh, god! Did you have to tell me? I’ve been in jail, and I’ve been shot at, and now I’m covered with eel-shit and _you’re not_.”

He’s got his arm over his face so he doesn’t see her stand, and then he’s glad he’s got his arm over his face because there’s a disgusting, soggy _plop_ on his jacket. She’s throwing it. Throwing swamp muck. At him.

He sits up, wide-eyed, and she giggles, and pulls a long strand of weed out of her hair and chucks it at him too. Then she grabs something he thinks might be a dead bird (but he’s definitely not telling her) off her shoulder and screams, and giggles again, hysterically, and flings it at his head. And then more mud, and she can’t stop laughing, and the sticks from up her sleeves, and she’s going for her ruined boots now. He’d better put a stop to this, he decides, so he reaches behind him for a handful of god-knows-what, staggers to his feet, and throws it at her.

After that it gets a little, well, muddy, and it’s impossible to tell who’s winning. They’re both even filthier than he thought possible and laughing madly: this is definitely the best sound he’s ever heard in his whole nine hundred-odd years and possibly the best thing he’s ever done too. They keep missing each other; there’s slime all over the TARDIS, and he’s going to hear about it later, but he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care a bit. She’ll be fine.

Finally they both collapse again, breathless, trying not to laugh any more because it hurts, but still snorting and snickering every time they try to stop. She hauls herself up eventually and hunts around for her other boot, pulling it out of a puddle with two fingers and a completely disgusted look. He starts to struggle up, but she hauls him to his feet and hands him his jacket, which he thinks he _might_ have tried to wrap around her head at one point.

Dragging a hand across his face, he grimaces at the slimy feel of the mud. “The TARDIS will kill us if we go inside like this.”

“Then she’s just going to have to kill us. She’s going to have to kill me all the way to my bathroom, and electrocute me the entire time I’m in the shower, which will be a long time, and then she’ll have to poison my towels. It’ll hurt, but I don’t care.”

“She’ll turn off all the hot water.”

“Better not.”

“She will, though. In the laundry too.”

“I don’t care about the laundry. This will never come clean.” And her clothes are truly vile.

“Ah, the TARDIS laundry’s brilliant. Anything will come clean if you ask her nicely. It might take three, or five, or, hmm, eight washes, but I’m definitely keeping this suit.”

“You do that. I’m burning all of this. Can I build a fire in the cloister?”

“Not the cloister!” He’s unlocking the door now, poking his head in experimentally. The ship’s growl is nothing short of epic. He pokes his head out again. “You cannot burn things in my cloister. The smell will never come out. Besides, that’s what the incinerator is for.”

“If I burn it in the incinerator,” she says ferociously, “I can’t _watch_ it burn.”

“Sorry. No pyrotechnics in my ship. Well, at least no pyrotechnics that don’t come out of the console in my ship. Now come on. Be really nice and quiet and don’t touch anything, and we might get out of this alive.”

*

As it turns out, the TARDIS is more forgiving that he’d expected. She relents and turns the hot water back on after only twenty solid minutes of his desperate pleas (Rose is scowling and glaring at him) and mollifying platitudes. God, he’s tired. The telepathy and the running and clinging to a tree and the mud… She goes off for her six showers, and he drags on a plastic poncho (emergency storage under the coat tree) to keep the slime from getting everywhere. First stop: the wardrobe. Somewhere there’s a bathtub the size of a duck pond that Rose doesn’t know anything about, but he’s got to find another suit before he can hunt for it. Ah, blue pinstripes. Red trainers. That’ll do.

It takes two hours to get clean and persuade the ship that it’s really in her best interests to let the laundry machines work, thanks, and then he could sleep for a week. Which is saying something, since he hasn’t _needed_ to sleep in a week. He wants to find her first, though.

She’s in the library with the couches, not the one with the science books and the wonderful big desks, wearing pajamas, sipping tea, reading a _dreadful_ romance novel, and if she’s looking solemn, she also looks like she never got chased through a swamp by armed men. Good. She’s fine. Time to go to bed.

“Doctor?”

So much for sneaking out and leaving talking to tomorrow, when his brain might be working again.

“Rose?”

“Are you coming in here, or…what are you doing there, anyway?”

“Just making sure the TARDIS didn’t actually electrocute you in the bath. I’m going to bed.”

“You? Sleep?”

“Yes, me, sleep. Uh, see you.” He’s abrupt, but he doesn’t really have any energy for anything else.

“…Goodnight.”

He’s at his door in a minute with the ship’s helpful guidance (good thing, because he wasn’t sure he could navigate on his own right now). He lets it click shut behind him and heaves a sigh. Trainers off, jacket off, tie off, that’s enough. Flat on the bed. It’s almost disorienting to lie still after the past forty-eight hours, but he’s sure he’ll manage.

“Lights.”

The room dims from a sunny cove to the deep sea floor and he tries to relax. Not very successfully. The body gets exhausted eventually, but the mind never stops, especially not after the overload of this adventure. Dratted huge brain.

There is a tap on the door.

She doesn’t know where this room is, doesn’t technically know that it exists. The only possible explanation is that the TARDIS just decided to take her here, which means the TARDIS thinks she has a good reason to be here.

There’s a tap again.

“Rose?”

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t wake you up, I just… And you left, so I thought…”

Either she makes more sense to the TARDIS, or his ship is a very bad watchdog. The lights come up about halfway, and the old girl’s poking his sore brain insistently, so she obviously thinks it’s important. He rolls his eyes and wills himself toward coherence.

“Yeah, no need to stand there talking through the door, come in.”

She slips inside, closes the door, sinks down on the step. Her eyes take in the room without staring—he’s grateful, he’s had the urge to change things since he regenerated, but every time he starts he gets interrupted. The place is a wreck, books and bits of screwdriver and the detritus of his previous self’s questionable taste in art everywhere. In her pale pajamas she looks very small against the door.

He should sit up, find his glasses, look attentive. But he can’t, physically can’t move. He sprawls. She perches on the step.

“Doctor. What happened today—yesterday—”

Yep. He knew it was going to be about this, right now, when he’s not ready for it and hasn’t slept and so the telepathic echoes are still humming through his brain. And she can’t even get it out, whatever she has to say, so he’s going to have to guess. This conversation is going to be _hard_. This day just never ends.

It’s Rose, and it’s now, and he actually can live with the day not ending as long as she’s going to be all right. But he’s still not totally sure that she will.

“Yes. The thing. That happened.”

“God, I’m sorry.”

Silence. He wants to tell her it’s all right, it doesn’t matter, because he wants to believe it. Wants everything to go back to normal. But she wouldn’t give him the wolf because it was too strong, and it’s made her strong too. She might never be ready to hear that it brought her something good, but it did, and there’s no going back.

“Yes.”

“I really am, please, you’ve got to understand. I looked, it hurt but I looked at what I did, and I can’t see any other way. I couldn’t….”

The memory’s on her face again and it’s choking her off. This is the test. There are only two ways it can go: she can remember to breathe on her own, or he’ll have to get it out for good, and she won’t be his Rose anymore, and she can’t ever even know he was there. It goes on forever, thirty-eight point oh-seven seconds, but forever, the black black stare and her hand over her mouth and that radiating fear. And then she gasps, and sucks in air. There is a glimmer, life in her eyes, and he’s sure he’s imagining that it’s gold and timeless, before she looks up at him with a hazel gaze.

“Did any of it make any difference?”

He’s fairly certain she can feel his relief at this point, because it’s rushing over him in waves and his mental shields are roughly as solid as Swiss cheese. There was that golden gleam too, the one that he might have hallucinated, but it makes him wonder fleetingly if she’s still the girl he thought she was, and what exactly she hears without knowing. There are so many things he’d rather she didn’t hear.

There are so many things he’d rather not tell her. And he’s so so tired.

“Do you know what I was doing while you were gone, on Satellite Five?”

“You were building a thing, a delta-thingy. It would have killed the Daleks. I guess you didn’t finish in time?”

“Delta Thingy—I forget Earth has no technology yet. I was building a Delta Wave.” And now the scientific recitation. “A delta wave is a brainwave; it’s completely normal, helps you sleep—well, it helps humans sleep, anyway. It keeps Daleks sane, insofar as that’s possible. What I was building—it was a weapon in the Time War, a kamikaze weapon. A Delta Wave transmitter disrupts normal brain activity. For Daleks, it drives them mad—they become intensely schizophrenic, and then their minds essentially eat themselves, and they die.”

She’s staring at him. This is a lecture, just science, he tells himself, and goes on.

“For humans it’s like dying from lack of sleep. Brain overload.”

Her face looks blank for a moment, and then she gets it.

“They would have died. You would’ve got the Daleks, but the whole Earth would have died, and everybody on Satellite Five.”

“Yes. The humans in other parts of the galaxy would have survived, but the people on Earth would have been wiped out. And Satellite Five too, of course. Jack knew. That’s why he helped me send you away.”

“And Time Lords? I mean, with the Delta Wave.”

“More or less like humans. It just takes longer.”

“I don’t understand. I—why? Was there really _nothing_ else?”

“No. There wasn’t. Except to let the Daleks win.”

“So…they were going to die anyway. And all the people on Earth, and all the people on Satellite Five. And you.”

“And me. I couldn’t have regenerated, you know; it would have driven me mad same as anyone else, with no way to channel the energy.”

“So what I did was better.” He looks over and she’s got her head in her hands, her fingers clenched in her hair.

“Rose, what you did was a way out that I never even imagined because I knew it was impossible, which it was until you did it. It had consequences that never crossed my mind. In some ways it was worse than what I planned, and in some ways it was better.

“The thing is, I built the Delta Wave, but I didn’t activate it. The moment came, and I tried, but I couldn’t. There were millions of people who didn’t deserve to die, and I didn’t particularly want to either, so I walked away. They—we—would have died anyway and been cloned into Daleks, and the Daleks would have taken over the galaxy, the whole universe, and I couldn’t be the one to stop it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean my solution was even more impossible than yours, for me. It’s sort of a paradox: you did an impossible thing to stop an impossible thing.”

“I still don’t see…there’s nothing good in it. When I remembered, it was like there was nothing good left in me.”

“No, there’s not. Good in it, I mean, not good in you. You’ve got loads of good, otherwise you wouldn’t have tried, let alone found a way out that meant millions of people lived who would have died. The Vortex could just as easily have destroyed everything in that sector, written it out of existence back to the birth of the Sun. Something had to guide it to touch only the Daleks.

“But you’re right; there’s no good in it. Do you know what a Pyrrhic victory is?”

“No. Please don’t change the subject, Doctor, not right now.”

“I’m not. A Pyrrhic victory is a victory, but one that costs so much on all sides that it feels like it couldn’t possibly have been worth it, even if it started out as the right thing to do. It’s been a part of human legend and history for thousands of years, and a lot of times it’s senseless; the consequences are truly so great that it hardly matters who wins. But occasionally, even though the victory is empty and the cost obscene, it’s right. That’s what you did: something terrible, but right.”

“And you couldn’t.”

“No. It’s…I see things differently, sometimes. I’ve seen a lot of war. You did it because you’re human, and you saw not a threat to the universe and a million dark futures, but a way to save your people. That’s what _makes_ you human.”

“Humans do terrible things.”

“Yes. But not as bad as Daleks, or lots of other cultures and planets and people.”

“I’m not proud.”

“If you were, I’d drop you off at the nearest penal colony. What’s going through your head is exactly what should be there, because you’re _still_ human. Some people wouldn’t be.”

There’s a dull smack, and he forces himself up on one elbow to see her, with her head back on the door and her eyes scrunched shut and her throat working.

“Doctor…” she’s forcing this out. “I’m not, I’m not _not_ proud either.”

“Ah.”

Her eyes are open and fixed, unseeing, with tears streaming down her face, and she’s still trying so hard. But her emotions are all over the map, meaning all over the room and all over his head, so he feels rather than hears _my God, it’s horrible, I’m horrible, he’ll hate me_.

“That’s why you came here, isn’t it? Being not-not proud?”

She nods.

“That’s all right, then. You did save the Earth, and probably most of the known universe, and, as a bonus, me. Those are still important, but it’s even better that you’re not proud of being glad that you did. Means you’re still Rose Tyler.”

“Am I really?”

“Definitely. You’re not the nineteen-year-old Rose Tyler who ran off with a stranger in a blue box for a lark, but you haven’t been her for ages anyway. You’re still you. Thing is, you didn’t remember what you’d done until yesterday, but some part of you knew for the past six months. I did remember, and I would have seen if it had twisted you.”

The long, low release of her breath is wind, wind rushing behind a storm, sweeping the thunder away.

“The other thing. I’m sorry you had to…fix it. Fix me.”

“I don’t mind. Well, I don’t want to make a habit of it—I don’t like invading other people’s brains—but I don’t mind.”

“Are you okay? You looked so tired all day, and you don’t even sleep, and now I’m keeping you from sleeping…” She snickers, a little. “We can’t get anything right today, can we?”

“Hmm, I have to agree. Not our best day. But I’m always alright.”

The step creaks and his eyes shoot open. She’s there, right in front of him, arms crossed, giving him the Oh-No-You-Don’t stare.

“If you think I believe that, I’ve got a house on Downing Street to sell you.”

He really doesn’t have the energy to breathe, but he thinks he might bubble over laughing if he could, just like with the mud. She’s Rose, still, and she will be very, very all right.

“Okay, you win. I am bruised and sore and I put my back out hauling someone out of a bog and showing a world full of eels exactly what they haven’t got. I’m completely exhausted but I can’t sleep because I’ve still got your telepathic resonance running through my head, so I don’t actually mind much that you came here. Nonetheless,” and he tries for his most winning smile, “I’m not sure we’re going to get out of the Vortex tomorrow. I’m going to have the universe’s worst hangover.”

“I’m sorry. I should—”

“Nope. Sorry is now forbidden. You’ve said it at least six times, you aren’t allowed to say it again. Besides, now that you’ve distracted me from my brain for a bit, you can keep on. See that book over there?”

“That one?”

“No, that one. Two stacks over and five down from the top.”

“You do have a library, you know, two of them,” she comments as she nearly tumbles the unsteady tower. “There are loads of books in here.”

“Nah, these are my favorites. Most of them are in the library too.”

“Why am I bringing you a book you’ve already read?”

“Best way to fall asleep, something you like where you know the ending.”

“But you read books in three seconds!”

He snorts. “Right now I couldn’t read a sentence in three seconds. With comprehension, it’d take at least six. Believe you me, stupid apes are far out in front. Could you grab my specs too?”

Digging through his jacket pockets looks to be even more of an adventure for the unwary than navigating his lack of bookcases. She pulls out the sonic screwdriver, three apples, a banana, a map of Rome (the planet), a tissue-paper crown, a sprig of blue grass, a piece of the true cross (yes, really), and a deck of playing cards before she throws up her hands and says, “No. I will not bring you your specs. And after all this--” she gestures at the objects she’s dumped on the floor “—I’m not sorry.”

“But I can’t moooove. Bring me my jacket.”

“No.”

“What? You’re just going to leave me here to stew in my own brainwaves?”

“Nope. Got a better idea.”

She drops unceremoniously to the thick Persian carpet (actually from Persia on Earth, centuries before her time, and a very good one too) and leans back against the side of the mattress.

“Book, please.” He reaches down, but she swats at his hand.

“No! Told you: I’ve got a plan.”

Apparently the TARDIS is in on this plan too; the lights dim out across most of the room, with one little bright splash across where Rose is sitting. She draws her knees up, curling bare toes into the priceless rug, and props the book across her legs. Which is when his abused brain gets it, finally, and he feels like he ought to protest but this is actually quite a nice idea. Moreover, when the ship gets involved with nice ideas she tends to do things like blow out every light in his room if he interferes, and he really doesn’t want to change fifty recessed bulbs with a telepathic hangover.

She’s found the bookmark now; messy twists of hair are shielding her face, but her lips are pursed and she’s obviously skimming the page. It’s not satisfying her. She starts flipping through the heavy volume like she’s looking for something, and he revises his opinion of her taste in fiction, because this is a _great_ book. Finally she finds it, whatever it is, and clears her throat.

“Mists curled and smoked from dark and noisome pools. The reek of them hung stifling in the still air…”

He smiles and runs one long finger across the ends of her hair where they splay across the mattress, and listens to her voice, the story of passing across water and grass and little lights and dead faces. Before the travelers have reached the other side, he is asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by The Weepies' "Red Red Rose" as quoted above.
> 
> Count the _Lord of the Rings_ references. Bet you can't find them all.
> 
> A Pyrrhic victory is technically a military victory that so incapacitates the winner that any further battle would be a disaster. From a more metaphorical, personal point of view, it's pretty much exactly what the Doctor tells Rose: a victory that in some significant way destroys the victor. Oddly enough, I first learned about the concept in a _Harry Potter_ fanfic about a gazillion years ago.
> 
> Delta waves actually are normal brainwaves that dominate certain parts of the sleep cycle. Messed-up delta wave activity correlates with lots of sleep disorders and also more debilitating conditions like schizophrenia. The explanation for the Delta Wave machine that I've used is my attempt to vaguely connect the events of "The Parting of the Ways" with actual science.


	5. Too Much to Hold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were a knife's edge from starving on an abandoned space freighter, so it really deserves a better answer: why her? Set, obviously, right after "The Girl in the Fireplace".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _His eyes are wide and beautiful  
>  My own feel dull and old  
> They can't recall some buoyancy  
> They've had too much to hold  
> Let them go_

“Mickey, wait!”

He doesn’t stop.

Asking for a TARDIS tour was just a distraction, an easy way out. He knows the most important spots already, and she can tell by the stiff angle of his back and his furious stride that he wouldn’t be interested anyway. After all, she has known Mickey her whole life.

Mickey the idiot. Only not today. God, what a cock-up.

They’re in the galley now, and he’s crashing through the cabinets like he can’t find what he wants and doesn’t really know what it is anyway. The slams are beginning to knock things off the counter.

Rose takes his hand and squeezes gently; it brings him back to Earth. Or wherever. He allows himself to be drawn over to sit at the table. While she puts the kettle on for tea and fetches mugs, his head sinks down to his folded arms. Silence, a tense silence, pulled tight like a bowstring.

She jumps when he slams his fist nearly _through_ the tabletop, even though she’s been expecting it.

“How. How can you just go off with this bloke—this _alien_ —and leave everybody behind, when he would do this?”

She doesn’t know what to say.

“He left you, left us, on a dead spaceship that for all he knew could still have been full of bloody clock robots. Left us for some French girl who died three hundred years ago, who he’d known for a _day_. Not even one day. Through the fucking looking glass. Drink me, who knows if you’ll come back? How can you trust a bloke like that?”

No, still nothing. There is no answer to this that would satisfy him. Mainly because there’s no answer that would satisfy her. However keenly Mickey felt those five and a half hours—and she knows it was terrible for him, not being used to time travel—she felt every second. Every single second that she didn’t know if he’d ever come back, while every minute he was gone could have been days with her. Reinette.

Why her?

Rose doesn’t know who to hate more right now. The snotty bitch, just for existing; Mickey for not shutting it for nearly six hours; or the Doctor, for spending God knows how long showing off his Jesus complex while trailing around after the king’s mistress.

“Rose. You’re not answering me.”

“No. No, I’m not. He’s not answering me and I haven’t got any answers for you either. Just stop.”

“No! I followed you up here—I thought this _Doctor_ took care of you—and we would have starved. Really starved and died, if he hadn’t had one tiny bit of luck. You have to think about what you’re doing. Your mum wouldn’t ever have even known. Just for some bloody alien running around with a dead French girl.”

“Stop!”

She takes a deep breath. “If I told you you’re right, everything is horrible, what would you say? Wouldn’t you tell me to come back home with you, go back to work, live with Mum again?”

“Rose—”

“You would. And it’s like I told you at Christmas. I can’t go back to riding the bus and living at the Powell Estate and working in the shop now.”

“So that’s it, then. You don’t care that he left you. You don’t care that you nearly died. Don’t you even care that you’re in love with him, and he left you here to go have a fling with some dead woman?”

“I—”

But there’s really no possible answer to that. Because she does, and she is, and it’s not something Mickey’s going to understand. And—

Oh, God, it hurts. Five and a half hours. Every minute. Every second. Stuck, and not knowing—

She doesn’t even realize that she’s crying until Mickey’s arms are already around her, and then suddenly she’s bawling into his shirt.

“God, Mickey, he said he wouldn’t leave me like Sarah Jane. And he did. I mean, I wouldn’t even have minded if Sarah Jane had come, I like her, but he left, went to…with this…. He meant to bring her _back_ , on the TARDIS, like he didn’t even care about history and timelines. With us. After one _day_.”

She pulls back, looks him in the face. He looks so unbearably sad. She’s spent a year believing he was just upset for himself when she left, but it’s not true. It’s like he’s always known it was going to end up this way. She swipes at her eyes: no good.

“D’you think he even knows? I came all this way, and I don’t even…does it matter? Or am I just like that too, some girl, in and out of his life in a day. After nine hundred years, we probably _are_ just a day.”

Her laugh’s dry and empty. A desert, choking on sand.

“Rose—”

“No. Don’t say it. Don’t say you were right. I’m not going back with you, I’m just not. I don’t know _why_ not, but I’m not.”

A heavy sigh pushes out of him, and she feels it too. There’s no right way out here. She’s lost, doesn’t know where to put her feet or whether the ground will be solid or even if there is ground. Mickey will leave. And all she can think of is the Doctor’s eyes, when he escaped from Versailles. The glow in them when he went back for Reinette, and the darkness after he returned from watching her hearse drive away.

Her heart's washed up and wrung out, like an old shirt.

Rose isn’t a churchgoer, except on Christmases when she’s not saving the world, and Jackie’s not either, but she dated one once and dragged Rose along to some kind of service. It was faintly scary: _remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return_.

It’s stuck in her head, that phrase, and today it's terrifying. She feels like dust. Some kind of relic that will pass, forgotten. He’s not, and while she’s always known that, in the back of her mind, she never thought he would forget.

The water’s boiling. Mickey sits her down, drops sugars into her mug and pours, presses the tea into her hands. He leans on the counter, sipping, and watches her.

An infusion of tannins, a clouded head. She stares unseeing at the table and tries to think what to do.

Neither of them hear the soft tread of trainers retreating up the corridor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by The Weepies' "Empty Your Hands" as quoted above.
> 
> So I had this eureka moment back in the spring about "The Girl in the Fireplace" and Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, the second installment of the Alice in Wonderland stories. I've made it my mission to actually read the book this summer, but the Wikipedia article alone was a bit of a revelation...
> 
> I own nothing, blah blah blah.


	6. You're Not Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forgiveness isn't always deserved, but sometimes being forgiven is the tipping point that lets you see how to earn it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set shortly after Chapter Five, sometime after "The Girl in the Fireplace" and before "Rise of the Cybermen".
> 
>  _I’m not yours  
>  You’re not mine  
> I hope you find  
> Love in time_

Yesterday, they visited a planet with incredible sentient whales. Rose thought they were absolutely majestic. She even said so.

The day before that, or rather, the two days before that, they went to Woodstock. The original, bona fide, wonderful Woodstock. Not the whole thing: the mud was a little excessive, and Rose hasn’t quite forgiven him for the swamp planet yet, but most of it. Long enough for Mickey to get a bit more stoned than he intended (Rose laughed), and plenty of time for the two of them to see Janis sing while he was sleeping it off. And he got to tell the very amusing story of his coat. She seemed almost as happy as she had on Woman Wept.

Today maybe they’ll go to, oh, ancient Venus. See what it was like before all those noxious clouds took over (the dangers of global warming). Or they could visit New New Zealand, even more dramatic than the first. Oh—the set of the original _Star Wars_? They could be extras; Mickey would love that.

He knows that when he’s planning a day according to what Mickey loves, he’s in trouble. Which he is. There are only so many ways to say _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_ when there’s no way to make the words come. Especially because he’s only, oh, ninety-seven percent sorry about Reinette. And honestly he thinks Mickey is probably angrier, since he’s furious on Rose’s behalf (and that shouldn’t come as a surprise) as well as his own.

Rose runs deeper, though. When they’re between things now, between places, she shrivels like a bud in a late frost. So they haven’t spent more time in the TARDIS than it takes to travel in the Vortex. They’ve even been sleeping planetside, in odd little inns and a muddy tent-filled field and a creepy abandoned cabin.

Today…hmm. There’s always Silva. The great forest, where even the stones are living things. Beautiful place, Silva. Good for the TARDIS too; she enjoys visiting other inanimate objects that aren’t actually inanimate. And she hasn’t been happy lately either. She listens to Rose, likes her, and frankly he’s surprised that the ship hasn’t locked him in the junkroom or sent him on a one-way trip to the brig. It’s not like he wouldn’t deserve it.

Well, then. Time to roust the crew, get them ready for a jungle.

*

“Roooose! Mickey!”

Hmm, where are they? The TARDIS isn’t telling. Still peeved with him. He wanders deeper. Finally he finds Mickey in the science library.

That’s not something he expected to see: Mickey Smith, auto mechanic, sitting at one of the massive desks and poring over a major work on teleportation technology.

“That’s some heavy reading.”

“Yeah, well, doesn’t make much sense, does it? Thought it might be useful to know how to get home, next time. Looks beyond me though.”

He opens his mouth, closes it, like a fish. Mickey looks up, fixes him with a hard stare.

“Rose doesn’t have a dad, or a brother. I’m not going to give you, y’know, that hurt-her-and-you-die speech. Little late for that. So let’s put it this way: fix it or I’ll convince her to come home.”

“Erm?” That was a lot at once, especially from Mickey the Idiot.

“You heard me. She could have died. I could have died. I’m not getting into it with you; wouldn’t end well. So fix it.”

“You know, the TARDIS has a program, keeps you from getting stuck…”

“Stop changing the subject.”

Yes, he is. This is a moment that’s half opportunity and half hell. He could just let Mickey do it. She’d be safe. He’d be…free?

He thinks about it, forever, eight point two seconds. He’s not sure if he wants to be.

“And don’t even think about keeping her around till you, I don’t know, find someone else, and then sending her back. You have any idea what happened the last time you did that?”

He does, but he can see he really doesn’t.

“Doctor. Fix it.”

Yes. If he can.

*

Rose has come up from the cloister (was she thinking of that night, with the stars?) and she’s in the console room, dressed for a safari. They’re waiting for Mickey. Neither of them knows what to say.

It’s becoming a pattern.

He clears his throat. “So, Rose, do _you_ know where this is?”

She snorts. “Oh, I have no doubt you’re going to tell me.”

 _Ouch._ Getting worse, not better. Erm. Carry on, then.

“This, Rose, is Silva, around—let’s see—the year fourteen thousand, three hundred, and twenty-two. No—twenty-four. When you step out that door, you’re going to see an amaaazing thing: a whole planet full of the most outrageously beautiful plants in the entire universe. Even the rocks are plants! I love saying that.”

“Plants?”

“Plants. Glorious, wonderful plants.” It would really help if she’d speak in more than monosyllables; his words are getting longer and longer. Filling space.

It’ll be all right once they get going. With the distractions of any new place or time, she’ll lighten up, remember why she’s here.

He has never been so desperate to see Mickey. Next thing he knows he’ll be pining for _Jackie_. ‘Course, if Jackie were here he’s fairly sure he would be getting far, far worse than a slap.

Mickey…get _up_ here…

And then Mickey is there. _Finally._ Still in his old football shorts and ratty t-shirt, just like he was before. Oh.

“Not coming then, Mickey?”

“Nah, I thought…y’know, long day yesterday, and I found this thing in the library…”

“What? You’re not coming to see the magical rock-plants? For the _library_?” Incredulous only begins to cover the look on Rose’s face; furious doesn’t nearly finish it.

Mickey, definitely not an idiot. The Doctor meets his eyes: _thank you_.

He thinks he’ll get away with a hand on Rose’s shoulder, and he does. They clatter down the ramp, out the door, and into a landscape of living jewels.

*

It does get better, after a little while. Wellll, that does depend a bit on your definition of better. Diplomatic crises don’t work for most people, but they do for him and Rose. Always have. Resolving the conflict between the Golems and Basilisks isn’t even that difficult. Comparatively, anyway.

By the time they get around to sightseeing, they’re both in a much happier mood, relatively speaking. She’s still quiet, but he’s very good at prattling. And she’s holding his hand again, even if her fingers feel stiff and sort of twisty.

But it is amazing here, which helps. He never gets tired of Silva in any age, crises or no crises. In any other forest almost anywhere in the universe, their trainers would stir up a rustle of leaves, a crackle of branches, a soft swish on moss. Here there is the clink of stone, the tinkle of crystalline vines in the breeze, the lower-pitched chime of tossed branches. A thousand shades of glassflowers glow—literally—at the immense bases of granite trunks. Light plays on the forest floor and across Rose’s face: filtered through leaves as usual, but glowing autumn in red and green and gold.

Beautiful, this.

He stops dead, stops talking in the middle of a sentence, and that grabs her attention like speaking never could. Interesting—could be useful later.

“Rose. I’m going to shut up for a minute.” She snorts—well, it might be the first time ever, it’s true. “Close your eyes, and listen.”

He does the same. No birds in this part of Silva—stone trees don’t make much of a home. There’s only the whistle of the wind, the tinkle of leaves and branches, and a low resonant hum. Perhaps fifteen seconds go by before Rose’s breath comes out in a rush. Her hand relaxes, then tightens on his. Yes.

“What’s that humming?”

“That, Rose Tyler, is the sound of life. No, literally, I mean it. Everything that’s alive makes a noise. It’s just all muffly in skin and bones. These plants are stone and crystal, so they resonate and actually magnify the sound.” He turns to her, grinning.

She opens her eyes, so wide, absorbing. “I’m really hearing things— _plants_ —just…being alive?”

“No…you’re hearing rocks being alive. Even better.”

It’s real again, the way she laughs, the swing of their hands between them. This time she might just be forgiving him, even more than she already has.

“Come on!” He runs.

*

They finally come to a stop where the woody trees and the stone trees begin to blend, a place with birdsong and windchimes, dead leaves and glassy ones.

For all he doesn’t have a home anymore, except the TARDIS, he seems to go about adopting tiny bits of each new planet. On Earth, it’s London, and he suspects the Powell Estate might be growing on him. On Silva, it’s right here: a gold-touched glen where towering maybelles, bigger than redwoods, loom above, and a tiny ruin shelters below. But what a ruin! The ancient inhabitants of Silva were wizards of wood and stone, who manipulated the forest as easily as they breathed. This was probably a child’s creation, a bonsai of stone branches twisted into a miniscule house no bigger than the TARDIS. The child seems to have been a bit of a perfectionist, and whimsical too, adding a well of crystal shrubs and even a little bench (this a living tree of the woody variety) to complete the scene.

Her laugh is a tinkling bell, among tinkling everything. “Oh my God. Where’re Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?”

He flops full-length on the bench (lumpy, but still good) and feigns nonchalance, watching her out of the corner of his eye. Her delighted smile grows as she circles the tree-hut, gently following the undulations of the interwoven trunks with her palm. The trees are slatewillows, with long branches and fronds brushing her face, trailing glittering blue blossoms through her hair.

Now he’s ninety-eight percent sorry about Reinette. Lovely and wickedly intelligent as she was, she couldn’t ever have matched Rose for joy or wonder or curiosity. And _he should not be thinking about her now_. Something else, hmm. He pops up from the bench and nearly bounds the two steps to the well, threading his head inside.

Yep, still there.

“Rooose!” _ooose-oooose-oooose_ , echoes the well, in harmony with its own breathing. “Come look at this!”

She looks bemused, not annoyed, as she lets her fingers slip off the tree trunks and joins him.

“What? Ooh, watch your head!”

He comes up, maybe a little too quickly, and points into the well. “There! See that?”

“I see red things…am I looking for red things?”

“Yes. You are looking at berrystones—not the most creative name in the universe, but absolutely the oddest plant. Even better than plants that are rocks! Every berrystone on Silva is the same organism, literally the same. They’re all shoots from one giant root system, like a squid with a billion little red tentacles popping up in every crevice and cave on this planet.” He laces his fingers and wiggles them all.

“Nah, not like that, giant squid. Your hair’s more like it.” And _there’s_ that smile, the one he’s waited a week to see: tongue in teeth, seeing what she can get away with.

“My hair?” This might be mock offense or it might be real offense, he’s not sure. He likes his hair, wild and not-ginger though it may be. “My hair does _not_ look like a squid!”

“’Course not. Just a jellyfish.” She smacks his arm playfully and sticks her head back down the well. “So can you eat these stone berries?”

“I wouldn’t try; I personally like my teeth. But berrystones are like clover. Their rubies are always in clusters of three—except when they’re in fours. Four-ruby berrystones are a major export on Silva; they’re considered one of the best good-luck charms in the galaxy.”

“Oooh! I must be very lucky then, Doctor, ‘cause I’ve got two already!”

If one branch of a planetwide silica-based root system can have a genetic anomaly, this is it. Eventually they find four four-ruby berrystone clusters.

“Sixteen lucky rubies…they are actually rubies, right? If I had these back on Earth, I could move Mum to a mansion, couldn’t I?”

Mum. Not me and Mum.

“Well, most humans don’t exactly know these exist yet. You wouldn’t get what they’re worth. Maybe just a largish house and a car.”

“They’re so beautiful I don’t want to pick them anyway. _Can_ you even pick them? I mean, they’re rocks…”

She pulls her head out of the well, blinking the gold light out of her eyes. “So do we wish on them? Or are they just for good luck?”

“Just good luck—lots of it, though, if you’ve got four.”

“Hmm.” She hesitates, breathes deep. “Okay. I think I’ll need it.”

“Oh?”

Then she’s staring him right in the eyes, humor gone from her face.

“I need you to know something. Look, y’know, it’s like Sarah Jane said: I’m not the first to travel with you, and I won’t be the last. I don’t…I’ve got no right to tell you what you can’t do. I know I’m just a little girl, a teeny little blink compared to you, all nine hundred years of you.”

Wherever this is going, it’s not good.

“I don’t want to care what happened on that ship, or in Versailles…wherever. But I was stuck, really stuck, on a dead spaceship thousands of years in the future. I’d’ve waited. Mickey wanted to take me home after, did you know? And for a minute I wanted to go. Not even a minute, ten seconds maybe. I wouldn’t have. I…just don’t take me for granted, Doctor.”

He’s just staring. His Rose, so strong. So scared.

“I—”

“No, don’t.” She swallows hard. “Just…you understand?”

“Yeah. Yes, I do.”

“Okay then.” She takes his hand again, shaking the melancholy from her face.

They’re silent a moment. He clears his throat.

“Won’t happen again. Well, impetuous crashing through mirrors—you know me, but I’ll try not to. Really.” They both know he’s not really talking about mirrors; it’s the other kind of looking glass, the kind that turns your mind in funny twists and sends you back changed.

She smiles up at him, tentatively, and for once the dead seriousness on his face earns him a real, true, Not-Silly Rose Smile. She tugs on his hand a bit and pulls him onward.

“You want to show me the rest of this place, yeah?”

They’re a good way into the trees when he thinks of it. “Wait here for a minute, Rose. I, uh, I think I dropped the sonic screwdriver.” _Terrible liar._ “I’ll be right back.”

He darts back to the well, just out of sight, and reaches down with the not-lost sonic. Just one little buzz, a faint _pop!_ and the sprig of berrystone comes away in his hand. Four rubies. He slips it in his pocket, for later, and hurries to catch Rose up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by The Weepies' "Red Red Rose" as quoted above.
> 
> If I could pick one place I've invented to visit, it would be Silva. The place they'll visit later that I didn't invent doesn't count.
> 
> I own nothing, blah blah blah.
> 
> Beta by Annissa.


	7. Foreign Nations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've turned up wonderful things and terrible ones in their travels. Sometimes the terrible ones just hit way, way, way too close to home. Set a while after "The Satan Pit".
> 
> WARNING: there's war. It's not bloody or gory or even immediately present, but...it's still war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Oh empty your hands  
>  Overheard conversations  
> Empty your hands  
> Static from the big bang  
> Dinosaurs, radio stations  
> Empty your hands  
> Genocides and foreign nations  
> Empty your hands  
> Let them go_

All of time and space, and what does she want to see? Earth.

“Oh, Doctor, please? ‘S not that I don’t love other planets, but the farthest I’d been from home ‘fore I met you was France, just for a weekend. There’s a whole other _world_ there, just there, my world and I’ve never seen it.”

Traveling with Rose is _brilliant_ , all of time and space. She’s brilliant, and sometimes he forgets she’s only twenty, a London shop girl without even any A-levels.

When he was twenty his people considered him a toddler, an infant who’d seen nothing of life, but he’d still seen most of Gallifrey. So no, he doesn’t mind showing her her home world. Good old Earth.

He grins, wiggles his eyebrows, and she giggles, knowing she’s won.

“Your world it is. Where to, Rose Tyler?”

**

Where to turns out to be India. He aims for the golden age of the Mughals, end up in Dandi, 1930, Gandhi and all. They are the palest people marching for independence, and it barely matters.

Where to is New York, New York, 11:59pm on December 31, 1999. He lands the TARDIS in the Times Square subway station— _great_ parking job, if he says so himself. Rose puts up with his lecture about how it’s not the new millennium, actually, until 11:57, when she finally tells him to shut it and enjoy the party. Which they do, historical idiosyncrasies and all.

Where to is apparently also the penguin nursery of Antarctica, the building of the Great Wall of China, and London on V-Day. And a host of other times and places.

He’d forgotten how much fun Earth could be when he wasn’t busy trying to save it.

He gives the TARDIS her head, no parameters but Earth, human history before 2006. It’s time for Rose to get a bit of education the best way possible: seeing the little things, the little places. Meeting the ordinary people who change history every day.

They’re in Japan. Japan, Japan, Japan. Been there, done that. Still pretty…only sort of smoky, this time. They’re on a hill outside one of the smaller cities, the sea sparkling beyond.

Rose lets go his hand, spins round to face him, walking backwards over the rocks and grass. She’s got a huge grin on her face, and not surprisingly, since she’s got an aptitude for this sort of thing, a million questions. Take Rose Tyler out of the Powell Estate and away from her dead-end boyfriends, let her go to school and find her muse, and she could have been a genius, a scholar, a teacher, a guide. But he got her instead, and on the whole he prefers that.

“So Doctor, back in Japan. But _when_ are we?”

He grins back. “Don’t know. Whenever the TARDIS took us, which means whenever the mood struck her to land. Knowing her, that could mean just about anything. But…hmm.” He peers down at the city below. “No earlier than 1920. No later than 1950, wouldn’t have been intact. And…” He sniffs deeply, snorting a bit by mistake. _Still_ not used to this nose, apparently, and it’s been months. Wait… He sniffs again.

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“No. What? What in the Seven Systems would she do that for? Why bring us here? There’s nothing…”

“Do what? What’s nothing?” The good humor’s gone from Rose’s face. He wishes, not for the first time, that she didn’t know this tone so well. “Doctor, what is it? When are we?”

A plane roars by overhead. He knows without looking: the buzz of one propeller rather than turbines, small plane, low-flying, not built to last more than that one run and an explosive, sacrificial end. Rose is looking, and because they have seen so much of history, she doesn’t have to ask what the insignia of the rising sun means.

The clouds are on his face again, crackling, an inevitable storm. He feels his ninth self, and eighth, settling a death grip around his hearts, and he knows. She’s staring at him: she remembers her timelines, she’s seen that face before—and she knows too. Her eyes dart down to the city, back to him, waiting for him to contradict it.

“That’s Nagasaki. It’s volcano day.”

They’ve been to fixed points before. There’s no reason to stay. She would only watch the clouds change and the fury grow on his face, while he could only see the horror and feel the fresh tearing of loss on hers. And the truth is, they’ve already seen each other’s faces.

She reaches out, a hand on his shoulder, other on his face, studying. He pulls her in, or she does, and they hold each other over Nagasaki, August 9, 1945, forty thousand people about to die.

There’s nothing to do but go back to the TARDIS.

**

After that he stops letting the ship steer. But they need to move on, something else, right away. Something beautiful, unexpected, peaceful, something with a view that doesn’t have a mushroom cloud at the end. Mountains would do, maybe: nothing famous, just mountains.

Rose is sitting on the jumpseat, hands braced against the edge and eyes on her swinging feet, or past them. She’s looked at him and opened her mouth twice since they came back to the TARDIS, and both times she’s shut it again, looked away, found something fiddly to do with her hands.

He hates filling the void for her, although that’s not fair since she’s done it for him for eighteen months now.

“So!” He claps his hands, rubs them together, looks for a rabbit to pull out of his hat. He doesn’t wear a hat. Might be useful, or cool. What kind? Hmm. Oh. Rose, mountains, not Japan, not hats. Right. He plasters on a grin she can’t possibly believe because he can’t even begin to believe it himself.

“So! We’re off! Wonderful views, nice breeze, peaceful meadows ahead.”

A corner of her mouth twitches and gives up, behind the curtain of her hair. She keeps staring at her feet. The problem with companions is if you let them stay around, get attached ( _never leave them behind_ ), they learn to see past the facades. So he drops it.

“Rose, are you all right?”

She laughs softly but not bitterly, and looks up. “Aren’t we always? I will be, promise. You?”

He doesn’t answer, but lets himself reach out, and while he’s always reaching for her, she always expects the hugs and the hand to hold. Not like this, which is new: a tiny thing, hooking her hair behind her ear and smoothing it back. Her mouth’s in a little “o”; he’s afraid for a moment that it’s all wrong, but she smiles sadly at him. They'll go on; they always do.

“So where to, Doctor?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by Annissa.
> 
> As with all odd-numbered chapters, inspired by The Weepies' "Empty Your Hands" as quoted above.
> 
> Dandi is the site of one of the largest marches of the Indian independence movement.
> 
> OK. This one was easy to write and hard to evaluate, and I could talk about why I wrote it for a very long time. Suffice to say that Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Little Boy and Fat Man, are never far from my mind watching this show, trying to make sense of what kind of situation could make genocide the lesser evil. People make justifications for the decision to use an atomic weapon, but the fact remains that 110,000 to 155,000 people were killed _immediately_ in the bombings, not counting the fact that radiation exposure contributed to tens of thousands of deaths later. Those are statistics; they were people. I don't want to get into politics or my personal views on how this event is treated in the history books, but it is a sensitive subject, and I simply want to say that I have used it here with all respect for the people who were killed in August of 1945.


	8. Falling Leaves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set immediately (and I mean _immediately_ ) after Chapter 7. A leap of faith outruns the storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Memories come back like falling leaves leaves leaves  
>  Never get to love by saying please please please  
> Praying only gets you on your knees knees knees  
> No one knows, red red rose_

He lands the TARDIS in, of all places, a parking lot. Well, a dramatic parking lot: it’s on top of the world, or so it seems, and more than a bit breezy. Rose heads off to the wardrobe for a windbreaker. The look on her face when they step out the door isn’t worth the other things they’ve seen today, but it would be worth almost anything else.

There’s impressive, and there’s impressive: the Rockies versus the Himalayas, or a hurricane versus hovering over a black hole. This is neither; it’s beautiful, striking even, but green, green and growing, green and alive. He shoulders the small bag Rose hands him (water and snacks—very prepared, for them), and she threads an arm through his. There’s a narrow path; they follow it.

Usually when they travel long distances by foot, they’re running, and even though this isn’t actually a very long walk it feels funny. Walking for fun. For fun, forty-five minutes and almost sixty-one years after humans became destroyers of worlds. But then that’s how it always is: be here now. Be in this gorgeous meadow with the sweep of wind that’s prevented trees from growing. Climb this little mountain, where she’ll sweat the anticipation of death out a bit. Be on this rock outcrop high above the world. Now, here.

“Don’t want to know where we are this time?” For once he actually does know: mountains older than Earth’s continents, July 2006.

“No, actually.” She’s breathing the landscape, wearing it: poplars and laurel, rocks and wind and sun all dancing across her face. “Don’t want to know. This is _magic_ , Doctor. Nothing like this at home. Not…extreme enough for telly either, yeah? If you tell me where and when it is, I’m afraid it’ll all disappear, or just not be magic anymore.”

She leans into him, eyes far away, and he lets an arm slide around her shoulders. Green and growing. “All the things you’ve seen, and always looking for something that can still surprise you.”

“Exactly.”

Rose Tyler: twenty years old, time-faring shop girl, staring at geological anomalies, frozen magma bubbles millions of years old, magma bubbles crowned by trees. It’s one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, a miracle of birds and leaves and incredible insects, a miracle you can walk on. Or a scientific wonderland: he’s never seen a miracle, but then he’s always wanted to be proven wrong.

Watching Rose watch the earth and sky, he stops listening to himself, or much of anything. Really he’s aware of nothing but that extraordinary wave of exultation and smallness humans experience in the face of beautiful things, which is radiating off her so strongly that he can feel it without even trying. He has to admit that regeneration aside, there are a few advantages to having a companion who has held the Vortex and changed herself, her mind, just a tiny bit by giving it to him: sometimes he can hear her.

He is, in fact, so focused on that freewheeling flying sense of peace that he stops paying attention to all sorts of things, useful things like the bits of himself that note the changes of wind speed and temperature, drops in barometric pressure, the volume and quality of birdsong. It would take something extraordinary to knock him out of this place, this time without counting, this feeling that one loses after nine hundred years of traveling. And it does: she stops feeling it.

She’s jerked her head off his shoulder, looking around wildly. Why? He shifts his brain back over to the sort of awareness where you have ears for hearing, and—oh. That’s not right. Not here, not now: they’ve been extinct here for a hundred years. Still, it’s undeniable: a wolf is howling.

“It’s okay, Rose. It’s just a…coyote. Yep, a coyote, that’s all.” He can’t fool himself and he sincerely doubts he can fool the Bad Wolf, but maybe he can fool her, and she’ll be safe. Things can go on as they are. He needs a distraction, quick. Oh, right, falling pressure, wind picking up, birdsong dropping off, and a wisp of dark cloud moving fast on the horizon: it’s not what he was looking for, but it’ll do.

All moments end: earth erodes, seeds blow away, cities come to dust.

“Rose. There’s a storm coming, and we’re the tallest thing around. We’ve got to get off this mountain.”

“What?” The “coyote’s” gone out of her head. “C’mon, Doctor, it’s a blue sky! There’s no storm.”

“Oh, but there is. See that cloud there? The teeny little one? That’s a storm. Doesn’t look like much and in most places it probably wouldn’t be, but here? I know where we are, and that could be thunder and hail in ten minutes. Five even, up high.”

She still doesn’t believe him. “But the breeze! ‘S so beautiful. Are you sure?”

“The breeze _is_ the storm, the edge of it. We’ve got no time. This is dangerous, Rose. People die of lightning strikes here every summer in storms just like this, the ones you don’t see coming. We could die.”

She laughs, but he can tell she’s paying attention now. “Doctor, we could die any day. Or I could. Almost got killed by the devil. Somehow storms just don’t seem so scary, y’know?”

His tone is grim as he watches the cloud, twice the size it was and definitely coalescing, darkening. “They should be. They can kill you. Both of us, in fact; lots of people. Everything you see here, all of this, is a storm pouring through. That’s the price of meadows and mountaintops without trees, or those incredible plants. Death.”

“I know.” She pulls him around to face her, looking straight into his eyes, deadly serious. It’s breathtaking and terrifying, what he sees in her face: she does _know_ exactly what hold the storm has on him, destruction, dying, and the cost of living. Maybe she always has, nearly a year since she saw everything that ever was. “But we’re _alive_.”

The cloud is three times as big now, half as far off as it was. No matter how much she refuses to let it rule them, it’s clearly time to go. She believes him. He believes in her.

They can’t run: it’s too steep and rocky, and as they make their switch-backing way down the mountain, the first spit of rain makes the trail slick. It takes seven minutes to reach the bottom, and then there’s the long stretch of field, completely open and exposed, leaves torn from nearby trees tumbling across it. But there’s nowhere to find cover here, nowhere safe. It’s time for a leap, or a sprint: a sprint of faith. They’re ready for it. With the cloud five times as big and the sky splitting and fiery one small ridge behind them, they run and run and run for home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta, as always, by Annissa.
> 
> Inspired by The Weepies' "Red Red Rose" and actual places and events. At least two things in this story are true.


	9. Go So Fast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes a leap of faith to find that the landing never has been as hard as you thought, that your new ground is exactly what you've been looking for. Set shortly after "Fear Her".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Floating past the daytime moon  
>  Transparent as a shell  
> Rubies in a well  
> Sixteen apples on a tree  
> We never would have seen  
> If his fingers weren’t so free_
> 
>  _Oh baby learn to run today  
>  In circles on the grass  
> His joyful face, it radiates  
> These moments go so fast  
> Let them go_

He throws his head back against her shoulder— _ow_ —and laughs like he will never stop, like he’s drunk on laughing and there will never be a hangover.

Rose flicks a—whatever these are—at his face. They taste like chocolate but look like popcorn, making them ideal for tossing at obnoxious friends.

Is that what they are? Lately she’s begun to wonder, since she saved him from the Isolus especially but before that too. A long time before: since she remembered that he kissed the Time Vortex out of her. The question’s not getting any simpler as they go on mostly like they always have, except with more moments like this: sprawled half on each other in the grass of the cloister.

“They are _not_ ridiculous! Did she really say that? Really really?”

She schools her face into the most serious expression she can manage with a half-hysterical alien giggling into—well, practically into the side of her throat. _Oh, again. What’s that mean?_ Mickey was so much…simpler.

“Oh yes, she did. Kind of confusing actually: she said that both Chloe _and_ the Isolus thought you needed me to help you match your shoes to your clothes. ‘M not lying. She also—” there’s no way the serious expression can possibly last through this “—my God, Doctor, she asked if I was your _mum_!”

They’re both howling now, hanging onto each other’s shoulders and practically nose-to-nose. It is by far the most _ridiculous_ thing she’s heard in the last two years of traveling.

She flops back to the ground, and when she can speak, asks, “so what’s that, 880 years’ age difference in the wrong direction?”

“Give or take a half-century. I lose track sometimes myself. My _mum_. What?”

“Oh yes. You have any idea how _old_ I feel? ‘S your fault, y’know. Your shoes, your running around with her in the park like a seven-year-old, spinning and spinning, tryin’ to make yourself fall over dizzy. _I_ was startin’ to wonder if you made up your age completely. Chloe’s mum thought she’d be sick, and that wouldn’t have been a very kind thing to leave them with, y'know.”

He giggles again, whipping out the sonic screwdriver. “Here, I can prove my age.” A quick fiddle later, he aims it at himself and then hands it to her. “See? Nine hundred and, oh, it says nine hundred and twenty-three today.”

“Mmm…no. I think your screwdriver is just _slightly_ psychic." She gives him a sidelong look, mischief in her eyes. "I’m goin' with seven, maybe six and a half.”

He sighs in his most theatrical, put-upon way and starts to put the screwdriver back into his jacket pocket.

“What? It’s _stuck_. It can’t get stuck. These pockets are--dimensionally--transcendent,” he growls, punctuating each word with another futile attempt to get the device stowed away. Sitting half-up, he fumbles, roots around, and she’d swear he’s just stuck his whole _arm_ so far down his pocket that it actually disappeared. “Here. Take this.”

She’s pretty sure he doesn’t know exactly _where_ on her he just dropped the sonic screwdriver, but then with the Doctor you never can be sure. She wishes she was. She wishes…. She wishes a lot of things, and she’s pretty sure that if he does, he’s never ever going to do anything about it. And she doesn’t feel old anymore: she feels so much younger, maybe fifteen, maybe less, because she has no idea what she can do about it. _Oh, Rose…_

A dull _thunk_ pulls her back to the grass, the cooling empty space on her shoulder, the cloister, the TARDIS. Then another, and another.

“You can’t find things in your pockets either! Ever think of cleaning them out? You could do your room while you’re at it, and your share of the washing up…” The likelihood of this happening: absolute zero.

“No, I _can_. Something is _sticking_ itself in the way, or being stuck in the way. Bother, bother, bother.” More rummaging. “Aha! What are you? Troublemaking bit of—”

He stops abruptly, holding something in front of his face, then grasping it tightly to his chest, eyes squeezed shut. Rose reaches for his hand, thinking to prise his fingers apart, but he takes her wrist gently and presses it back to her waist, lingering only a moment longer than necessary, just barely long enough for her to know that he did.

He turns his face to hers and opens his eyes. These are not the desperate eyes, the clouded ones, the puppy-dog look he turns on her when he’s not getting his way. These eyes are absolutely liquid, holding all the sadness, the fear, the childlike joy, and something she hasn’t quite learned to name. Yet. He turns his head toward the sky and addresses the stars.

“Do you remember the balloons, on Astra?”

“That is not a balloon, Doctor.” He huffs, and she gives in. “Yes, I remember: eight balloons each. I wished I could stay with you forever.”

He smiles; she remembers New Earth, smiling at the clouds in the applegrass. “Did you?”

“Yeah. Other things too, you know, 's not all about you, but mostly that I wouldn’t ever have to go. You never told me what you wished for.”

His hand finds hers, draws it against his side. “I wished that bad days would turn out all right, and they have. I wished…I wished a lot of things. You probably know now that I couldn’t have explained them at the time.”

“'S all right, yeah?”

“Not really. But you can guess.”

“Maybe I can now.” She leans her head into his, forehead to cheekbone, and if he lets out a little sigh it’s the kind she can hear and feel inside rather than with her ears and skin.

Since she met the old him, with the leather, she’s known he hides behind his jacket or his silly hair or his glasses, but he doesn’t realize that after Satellite Five a part of her has always been able to find him. She’s only barely begun to put it into conscious thought herself, the thing that told her to wait on Krop Tor and where to find the Isolus in 2012. Right now, she just knows what she knows: he sighed when she put her face to his, drew her hand further between his fingers without ever changing his grip.

He clears his throat, and she remembers the closed hand and the look in his eyes. “Sixteen red balloons. Sixteen wishes.”

“I remember, Doctor.”

“And sixteen apples last week.”

“Well, _you’re_ the nutter who thought it would be a good idea to lie under Newton’s tree on a windy day.”

He grins. “Makes us sixteen times smarter than he was, right?”

“That wouldn’t seem like cheating if you hadn’t been the one to explain gravity to him. _I_ still have bruises. Sixteen’s a lot of apples to fall on you.”

“Yes, sixteen is a lot of apples. Things keep coming in sixteens.”

She groans. “Doctor, I was having such a nice night. Please, please don’t tell me that this is the--the new Bad Wolf or an evil code or somethin'.”

“Nah. Just a coincidence. Well, probably.” Rose thinks he doesn’t sound too sure about that, but she’ll let it slide. That’s the thing about living in and out of time: there’s no use worrying about tomorrow, or yesterday. Really there’s only right here and right now.

“So what else comes in sixteens?”

“For us? This,” and he raises his fisted hand over her, opening it.

The first time she saw these, she wondered at the child-sized rocks and trees, wondered why he’d brought her there, wondered what a whimsical Time Lord child might have created if a young Silvan could build a tiny fairytale treehouse. That first time, she tried her luck, all the luck of red balloons and not-clovers, and she saved the delicate thing that bound the two of them together. The first time she laughed, and left beauty for another day.

She reaches out and he lays the sprig of berrystone in her palm.

Truth is, he can’t hide from her, but she can’t always understand what she sees.

“I didn’t lose the sonic screwdriver on Silva. I went back for them. I thought I might, you might—” _we might_ , unsaid “—need some luck again. Anyway, meant to give them to you, but they got lost in my pockets, always happens. Did you know the Basilisk people on Silva did—will do, actually—a study on the chemical properties of berrystones? They’ll discover that there actually is a sort of pheromone they release—”

Oh God, babble babble, always babble babble when he should be saying something _important_. Or not saying it, like this: she slides one hand up his cheek, across the silly sideburn, draws his face toward hers. And kisses him.

She means it to be a quick peck. No, that’s a lie. She couldn’t mean that if she tried. But she discovers that she doesn’t mean it to be hungry or hard or rushed either. It is forever; it is no time at all, her thumb by his eye and his hand coming up to brush delicately through her hair. It is all of time and space. It is the turn of the earth, infinitesimal and eternal.

It will never end, and it already has.

He draws his lips away, presses his forehead to hers. _Rose, Rose, Rose._ He isn’t saying it, but she still hears. And then he’s pulling back, sitting up. For a single second, a split second, it all crumbles, beautiful but so distant and lost already, while she stares at his back. Then he turns to face her, and the destruction never happened, never will. She realizes, as he draws her up from the ground and lies down again flat so he can hold her, that now she can name the nameless thing in his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by Annissa.
> 
> Inspired by The Weepies' "Empty Your Hands", as quoted above.
> 
> Sixteen? What's with sixteen, you say? Aha, say I, and smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired (as are all odd-numbered chapters in this story) by The Weepies' song "Empty Your Hands", quoted above.
> 
> Beta by Annissa!


End file.
